Try rolling back attitude

When a company's sales are pushing $200 billion, it's understandable that it wouldn't bend over backward over a program that only brought in about $3 million. But when the company is Wal-Mart, and the program one sponsored by the state of West Virginia to provide vouchers for poor families to buy clothes for their school-age children, you'd think the retail giant could be a little more flexible in accepting the vouchers, which the company says are too time-consuming to process. Monopoly: If Wal-Mart hadn't pushed so many of the little retail shops out of West Virginia, maybe poor families could go elsewhere to take advantage of the state plan. But according to John Law, a spokesman for the state's Department of Health and Human Services, Wal-Mart is the only clothing retailer there is in many rural areas. Wal-Mart is suggesting that the state buy Wal-Mart gift certificates instead of providing the clothing vouchers. But that would mean that the retail giant would get all the state dollars up front, blocking any competition in other areas and making it possible for the certificates to be used for products other than clothing. If the Walton family can't justify the cost of paperwork from a business perspective, perhaps they could think about the spiritual benefits from suffering the little children that come unto them.